[papabrown]

Or, it could just be that far more people are investors today than there were in 1929. According to this site, only about 10% of Americans owned stock or speculated in the markets in 1929.

>In fact, only approximately 10 percent of American households held stock investments and speculated in the market; yet nearly a third would lose their lifelong savings and jobs in the ensuing depression.

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/atd-hostos-ushistory/chapt...

Yet, this poll seems to indicate that around 55% of Americans now hold stocks.

>Thus far in 2020, Gallup finds 55% of Americans reporting that they own stock, based on polls conducted in March and April. This is identical to the average 55% recorded in 2019 and similar to the average of 54% Gallup has measured since 2010.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/266807/percentage-americans-own...

So if slightly more than one out of every two people you meet owns stocks, I would assume you're bound to run into a lot of people talking about stocks.

[xyzzyz]

I presume most of today’s stock owners are actually owners of 401k account which invests in something like Vanguard Target retirement fund. As a result, they know pretty much nothing about stocks, yet they do own them.

[papabrown]

I would presume that as well. However, that doesn't negate the fact that 10% vs 55% is a considerable gap.

In 1929 if the shoeshine guy was giving you stock tips, it signaled a very different level of market euphoria than today when your gym trainer is talking about stocks.

Also, today we live in a world where there's just so much more accessibility to information. Only about 1.3% of the planet has ever owned Bitcoin. About 13% of Americans have ever owned Bitcoin but 90% of Americans surveyed have heard of Bitcoin.

I don't mean this to be about Bitcoin, only trying to point out the massive gap between something that is relatively niche, and the number of news articles/stories, discussion, etc about it.

[gverrilla]

> Only about 1.3% of the planet has ever owned Bitcoin. Source?

[papabrown]

https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/how-many-bitcoin-users/

>With one study suggesting ~25 million cryptocurrency traders outside the USA & Europe, it seems quite likely there are over 100 million owners of bitcoins.

>If true, it means about 1.3% of the world's population owns bitcoin.

I've seen a few other sources make a similar estimate using different methodologies.